Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Richard Case Nagell and JFK Assassination Case

One day after receiving a letter from the Assassination Records Review Board, a key witness in the murder of JFK was found dead in his home in California. Meanwhile, new evidence continues to pile up regarding Lee Harvey Oswald's connections to the CIA.
At 9 PM last November 1, the landlord of a house in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles unsuccessfully tried the locks, then pried open a window and forced his way inside. Robert Lavelle had been alerted by a neighbor that his tenant, 65-year-old Richard Case Nagell, had not been seen for several days. Lavelle discovered the already-decomposing body of Nagell in the bathroom, and immediately alerted the police.

autopsy performed by the L.A. County Coroner's office determined that Nagell had died of a heart attack, the timing triggered alarm inside the ARRB.

As outlined in my 1992 book about Nagell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York), the ex-military intelligence and CIA operative...... a tape recording done surreptitiously by Nagell in the late summer of 1963, where at least four individuals--himself, Lee Harvey Oswald and two Cuban exiles--plotted the assassination of President Kennedy...Nagell has chosen to reveal about his role in the conspiracy goes like this: Under contract to the CIA, he undertook an assignment as a "double agent" who would cooperate with Soviet intelligence beginning in the autumn of 1962. Under KGB instructions from Mexico City, for a year he monitored discussions among a group of embittered Cuban exiles who were seeking to assassinate Kennedy and make it look as though Fidel Castro's Cuba was behind it. He was simultaneously asked to keep an eye on Lee Harvey Oswald, recently returned to America after his alleged "defection" to the USSR.

Oswald was brought into the conspiracy in July 1963, deceived into thinking he was working for Castro. Soviet intelligence ordered Nagell either to convince Oswald he was being set up to take the rap--or to kill him in Mexico City before the assassination could transpire. While both U S and Soviet intelligence agencies were aware of the conspiracy, it was the KGB--not the CIA or FBI--that attempted to prevent it. The Soviets, who had reached a growing accommodation with Kennedy after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, were also afraid that the assassination would falsely be blamed upon them or the Cubans.

Nagell, instead of carrying out his assignment, sent a registered letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (which he also served as a confidential informant) more than two months before the tragedy in Dallas, providing enough information to warrant the arrest of Oswald and two Cuban exiles. While the bureau says it cannot locate any such letter in its files, it is likely that Nagell kept a copy and the registered-mail receipt among his effects.

According to Nagell the conspirators believed that if they set-up Lee Harvey Oswald, a well-known supporter of Fidel Castro with links to the Soviet Union, the assassination would result in a full-scale war against Cuba.

Richard Case Nagell: Inside Knowledge of a JFK ...
mcadams.posc.mu.edu/nagell1.htm
The Kennedy Assassination
Richard Case Nagell claimed to have foreknowledge of a plot to assassinate John Kennedy. Did he in fact know anything? Part 1 of 4. In the fall of 1957, Richard Case Nagell was reportedly working for the US Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), 441st Counter Intelligence Corps Group, at Field Operations Intelligence's Far East headquarters in Tokyo.(1) According to Nagell, he was supervising a review of classified Military Intelligence files,(2) but also "a non-paid, confidential informant" of the CIA.(3)As Nagell told it, he became aware of Lee Harvey Oswald in November 1957, when Oswald and another American ostensibly visited the Soviet embassy in Tokyo. According to Nagell, Oswald was photographed by the Japanese as he entered the embassy.(4) Nagell claimed that he and Oswald met soon after this, when each allegedly played a role in a CIA operation to convince Soviet colonel Nikolai Eroshkin to defect to the US.(5) He also claimed that he and Oswald had together frequented the Queen Bee, a Tokyo nightclub rumored to have been a hotbed of KGB activity.(6)Nagell claimed that in the fall of 1962, he began working undercover in Mexico City for one "Robert Graham,"(7) described to Dick Russell as a "'subordinate' CIA officer whose ultimate reporting reached all the way up to Desmond FitzGerald in the CIA hierarchy."(8) When an agency of the USSR purportedly offered Nagell an intelligence assignment related to the Cuban Missile Crisis, he allegedly consulted Graham for advice. According to Nagell, Graham instructed him to "take the bait," signifying that Nagell would ostensibly be infiltrating the Soviet agency under Graham's supervision.(9) At about this same time, Nagell was allegedly given an assignment concerning Lee Harvey Oswald, though Nagell specified that the task was in no way related to the JFK assassination.(10)

Nagell also claimed he was involved in monitoring a group of Cuban exiles plotting against Fidel Castro. In 1963 Nagell discovered that this group was planning to assassinating John F. Kennedy while making it appear that it had been ordered by Castro. When he told the KGB they ordered him to warn Lee Harvey Oswald about what was happening. Nagell also claimed he warned the FBI and CIA about the plot.

In September, 1963, Nagell walked into a bank in El Paso, Texas, and fired two shots into the ceiling and then waited to be arrested. Nagell claimed he did this to isolate himself from the assassination plot. This was successful and Nagell was charged with armed robbery and ended up spending the next five years in prison.

On his release Nagell told Jim Garrison about his knowledge of the assassination of John F. Kennedy . He claimed that David Ferrie, Guy Banister, and Clay Shaw were involved in this plot with Lee Harvey Oswald. However, Garrison decided against using him as a witness in the court-case against Sha